I've gone a bit mad with sowing peas and beans this year in order to use up the seeds before they go out of date and never do tepee/wigwam too congested at top. Tried the x frame but now have an arch, a 'Bob the gardener' frame and two scaffold posts driven into the ground with strong garden wire strung between then and canes evenly spaced and matted in with the wire, a gale force wind would not knock it over...:)
My husband has made a tepee shape with stout willow, they're sprouting nicely and growing to hit the top of the greenhouse, so he had to cut the tops off. The runner beans are doing great! We'll have some rooted willows to plant at the end of the season.
Reading research some while back that the X frame generated higher yields than A frames, I have adopted the format ever since. I invested in a bunch of metal poles covered in green plastic. They are surprisingly cheap in the B & M discount store, much cheaper than in garden centres, B & Q, Homebase and even Wilko.
I use the metal poles covered in green plastic, they last for years. I've always tied them in a compromise between A and X. This year I have changed the veg garden to rectangular no dig beds so the bean poles are in half of one tied in a square teepee.
Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
I have three metal posts, in the ground about 6 foot apart, then at head high two bamboo canes, then 8 foot bamboo canes up through the two head high canes, the canes about a metre apart at the base, beans easy to see and pick.
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I've gone a bit mad with sowing peas and beans this year in order to use up the seeds before they go out of date and never do tepee/wigwam too congested at top. Tried the x frame but now have an arch, a 'Bob the gardener' frame and two scaffold posts driven into the ground with strong garden wire strung between then and canes evenly spaced and matted in with the wire, a gale force wind would not knock it over...:)